The Cinemartin VENUS is a recently announced high-brightness slimline monitor that provides a professional solution at a competitive price. For a limited time only, it is available with a very attractive rebate offer.
Rated at 1000 NIT, the VENUS‘s high brightness makes monitoring and focusing easier when shooting in sunlight, or in situations that present a wide dynamic range. 10-Bit processing allows for more colour information to be displayed too, with up to 1.07 billion colours. This is achieved by FRC (8+2 Bit) ‘that produces an effect to see cleaner, natural, and a greater range of colours’.
The monitor is slimline, with an average depth of only 11mm that makes it thinner and lighter than the Atomos Ninja Flame and the SmallHD 702 Bright. Its aluminium chassis makes for a small and light monitoring package that can be used with many cameras via HDMI.
The downside to this monitor would be, as noted by the manufacturer: the Cinemartin VENUS is designed to be slim, durable and affordable, choosing to leave out advanced features such as peaking, waveform, vectorscopes, overlays for framing or LUT support. You would have to look at around the $1000.00 price mark for these features.
The controls are accessed via buttons on the rear of the monitor rather than through a touchscreen. The reason is that touchscreen functionality would decrease the monitors brightness by 2 stops.
On release, the price is certainly very affordable for a high brightness monitor in comparison to other higher-priced products, such as from SmallHD or Atomos. Whether the quality holds up to the other products available, I’m not sure yet. After using Lilliput monitors for a while, I made the switch to Atomos when seeing the visual quality improvement that they offered.
The package includes free shipping, 2 battery plates and software for ProRes and HEVC H.265 encoding (valued at €199.00), with a price tag of only $795.00 (€695.00). As part of a limited offer, if you purchase a monitor and send back a video review, Cinemartin will refund $200.00, making the purchase cost $595.00 (€495.00) in the end.
Cinemartin VENUS – Specs:
Luminance from 700 to 1000 NIT.
Bit Depth: 10 Bit (8+2 FRC).
True 1920×1080 resolution.
7 inch screen size.
Runs on Sony NP batteries.
HDMI input.
UI features – brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, flip, stretch (16:9 to 4:3), colour temperature.
Power rated at 9W.
Includes software for ProRes and HEVC H.265 encoding (valued at €199.00), and two battery plates.
Are you looking for a high brightness monitor? Could the Cinemartin VENUS be it? Let us know in the comments.

Chinese lens manufacturer Venus has announced a new interesting wide-angle lens.
The Venus Laowa 15mm f/4 will stand as the widest 1:1 macro lens in production for the full frame format.
When discussing macro lenses, one would normally expect something in the 160-150mm focal range, image stabilization with a heavily compressed background.
The Venus Laowa 15mm f/4 offers a completely different slant of macro photography/film, enabling a maximum 1:1 magnification ratio on a wide 15mm lens.
The result is quite unique; small objects become large in frame whilst still retaining a large amount of background information.
Here are some images taken on the Venus Laowa 15mm f/4 (albeit none full at 1:1 magnification ratio):
You’ll be exceptionally close to your subject at 1:1, with a minimum working distance of just 0.47cm (perhaps a little too close for some 8-legged hairy subjects).
The Venus Laowa 15mm f/4 offers 110 degrees Angle of View on Full Frame, is manual focus only and compatible with the usual suspects of Canon EF, Nikon F, Sony A & FE and Pentax K.
Here’s the rest of the specification:
Focal Length: 15mm
Max Aperture: f/4
Min Aperture: f/32
Angle of View: 110/85 Degrees (Full Frame /APS-C)
Shift (For APS-C): +/- 6mm
Lens Structure: 12 Elements in 9 Groups
Aperture Blades: 14
Min Working Distance: 0.47cm (1:1)
Min Shooting Distance: 12cm
Max Magnification Ratio: 1:1
Focus: Manual Only
Filter Thread: 77mm
Dimension: 83.8 X 64.7mm
Weight: 410g
Mounts: Canon EF, Nikon F, Sony A & FE, Pentax K
The above Shift spec refers to a shift mechanism on the rear of the lens that enables fine-tuning for distortion correction.
As you can see, both the promo video and images have gone with the consistent theme of nature, particularly small animals or insects as it really offers a unique perspective that would otherwise require extension tubes to achieve.
There are plenty of other uses however; enhancing the presence of your foreground with such magnification ratio yet retaining so much background information can help tell your story (AMC’s Breaking Bad utilizes this technique quite a bit throughout the seasons).
The lens will come in at a very attractive price point, sub $500 making it a handy tool to have in the kit box. Shipping expected mid to late July this year.
via/ Sony Alpha Rumors & Venus

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